THE FIRE OR THE FLEECE? (1 OF 3)

For three Wednesday nights we are going to study the life of Gideon. Tonight I want to just jump down to the 11th verse of this chapter and read through verse 16, but we are going to study the entire 6th chapter of Judges. The key to the book of Judges is the last verse of the book where it says, ''In those days there was no king in Israel and every man did that which was right in his own eyes.'' The 6th chapter begins in the first verse by saying, ''The Children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.'' Everybody was doing what they thought was right in their own eyes. But what they were doing was wrong in the Lord's eyes. This means that Israel had moved its center of authority. Instead of looking to God as their final and fixed authority they had made a shift in their thinking and they had come to the position that every man was his own authority and that absolute standards of right and wrong no longer existed. That's what we are experiencing in American culture today. There was a time in America when people believed that the authority of God was absolute. That there were some certainties - some rights and wrongs that were absolute. Now people have been taught and most people have come to believe that there is no such thing as an absolute moral certainty. I heard about a professor who said to the young people in his class, ''Young people, nothing is certain.'' One of the young men raised his hand and said, ''Sir, are you sure about that?'' The professor replied, ''I am absolutely certain.'' You can't even carry on a logical conversation if you do not believe there are any absolutes. This is exactly what had taken place in Israel. It is exactly what's taking place in America tonight. As result of this Israel found themselves engulfed and swarmed by a Canaanite culture and all through the book of Judges we see the decline, the collapse and the fall of the Children of Israel. Verse ...

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